By Kamal Sanjakdar ---

A collective workshop on citizenship would be of great help in this country. The sad fact is that there are no Lebanese citizens in Lebanon; there are only members of sects. Our government does not recognize its people as a group of individuals, but as a group of sects. The confessional political system and the absence of a civil law for personal status are some of the factors that institutionalize the state rejection of "individual citizens." In order to be Lebanese you have to belong to a religious group. All of the above have resulted in the majority of the Lebanese giving priority to their religious affiliations at the expense of their belonging to Lebanon. We need to learn to become citizens because the Lebanese civil war ended where it started. We need to be initiated to citizenship to accept others as they are and not as we want them to be. Having in mind that different opinions should not lead to conflicts, we need to become Lebanese citizens because ten years after the technical end of the civil war, each of us wants the country exclusively for himself according to his exclusive aspirations and to his historical complexes. The Lebanese civil war didn't teach us much. No social reform took place, no move forward in political and institutional reconstruction, only the incorporation of a confessional status quo in the constitution. Ten years after the Ta'if accords, we still think as we used to before April 13, 1975. You have those who want Lebanon to be an Arab country and those who want it westernized. All our problems and divisions emanated from and are still due to this division. Some don't want Lebanon to be an Arab country although they are convinced it is, fearing to drown in a vast Arab world of millions of Arabs and Muslims. Others hold firm grip on the Arab identity of the country, maybe not by principle but also fearing that Lebanon will become the second stronghold of the western powers in the east after Israel. No one has thought that we are all one people in one country having the same rights and same duties. No one has thought that Lebanon can be an Arab country while preserving its own democratic values. We have to believe in our country without westernizing it and making it an intruder in the east and also without drowning it in its surroundings and erasing the values that have always characterized it. We have to promote such concepts of Lebanon as an entity in the Middle East. Building the concept of citizenship has to be started on the educational level in both schools and universities. Look around you: all universities in Lebanon are divided along sectarian lines. AUB is perhaps the only truly non-sectarian university. I am not accusing other institutions of higher education of applying sectarian policies in admissions, although some of them might be doing so. I am only saying that due to their geographical location and their affiliations, all universities in the country have a homogeneous student body as far as religion is concerned. This division is obvious in the first and second branches of the Lebanese University, in the Beirut and Jbeil campuses of the Lebanese American University, in the Saint Joseph University and in the Beirut Arab University. How can anyone expect the Lebanese people to belong to their country and to be citizens if ever since they were students divisions along sectarian lines have prevailed? Acknowledging the above sectarian division of the institutions of higher education in Lebanon, AUB students, professors and administration have to play the leading role in promoting the concept of citizenship for the Lebanese people in the country. Many times in student elections, sectarian forces, arguments and divisions emerge. On other occasions such as controversial exhibitions or lectures, such forces reappear. We, as students, should be aware of the danger such actions, political platforms and social behavior cause on the national level. On the other hand, more activities should focus on this issue. Exhibitions, lectures, workshops and, why not, courses should be given on a regular basis on campus to promote this sense of citizenship and belonging to the Lebanese state, to the country as a priority instead of belonging to a clan, a family or a sect. The concept of citizenship is one factor leading to the final removal of the traces left by the civil war of 1975. We cannot learn form our civil war experiences unless we face them with radical social reform, a move forward towards belonging without falling into the trap of hostilities.